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Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

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Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#271

Post by lucideer »

franga2000 wrote: post #161
WhyNotHugo wrote: post #127

You'd think that Mozilla has an excess of funding and has covered absolutely all needs in the browser space leading them to branch out like this... but the browser really needs a lot more hands and funding, I honestly can't make sense of this. And Fakespot: they present themselves as a company that focuses on detecting AI-generated content from human-generated content. It sounds like they've set out to play Whac-A-Mo…

> It sounds like they've set out to play Whac-A-Mole against the all the biggest AI companies in the world. That's exactly what they're doing with the biggest ad trackers and browser vendors. A lot of Mozilla's "side-projects" are stupid and I also agree they should focus more on Firefox, but this one is pretty in line with their general mission of "we'll fight the big guys because, if we don't, nobody else will".

> we'll fight the big guys

I'd be more convinced of this if they weren't actively collaborating with the big guys.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#272

Post by jeroenhd »

JohnBooty wrote: post #106
jeroenhd wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox is behind on general web support compared to any other browser. That's not just weird APIs like WebUSB and WebSerial and WebGPU, but also CSS things. It's almost as bad as Safari, except it's broken in very different areas. There's plenty to improve. On Android there's the whole extension mess (and tons of other quality of life improvements), on desktop Firefox could use some proper PWA support (even Safari h…

"Firefox is slower than all the other browsers" Wow, absolutely not my experience. I use both Chrome and FF regularly on Mac and PC desktops and laptops with vintages ranging from 2011-2023. There is no perceptible difference to me. Admittedly all of my machines are relatively comfortably specced. Desktop-class CPUs, 16GB+ of RAM, SSDs. Perhaps the difference is more pronounced when the computing environment is more…

Firefox is fine on all platforms. Smooth even! But in terms of loading time and raw JS performance, Chrome wins hands down every time in my experience.

Using https://browserbench.org/Speedometer2.0/ this is quantified not only by some arbitrary number but also through the visibly slower update speed during the DOM tests.

I use Firefox on every device, but Chrome is just faster. I can live with the impact on speed for all the privacy features, but if Mozilla ever wants to get their market share above 5% again they'll need to provide the common user a reason to switch and that'll be hard when the browser is noticeably slower.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#273

Post by sockaddr »

lucideer wrote: post #271
franga2000 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It sounds like they've set out to play Whac-A-Mole against the all the biggest AI companies in the world. That's exactly what they're doing with the biggest ad trackers and browser vendors. A lot of Mozilla's "side-projects" are stupid and I also agree they should focus more on Firefox, but this one is pretty in line with their general mission of "we'll fight the big guys because, if we don't, nobody else will".

> we'll fight the big guys I'd be more convinced of this if they weren't actively collaborating with the big guys.

But their marketing copy has a bunch of differently colored corporate Memphis people doing happy and fun things, surely they have our best interest at heart!

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#274

Post by JumpCrisscross »

sam_goody wrote: post #259
agumonkey wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how it felt to me too. Stretched too thin. Yet as a small company compared to MS or Google, I can imagine how hard it is to try to thrive or just survive and maintaining a stable path when you're fighting big pockets. I just wished they could rebalance their allocation and focus on simple daily usability things. Just a bit more. ps: for instance, the screenshot tool is brilliant

Stretched too thin? They fired Brendan Eich, who invented JS, led Netscape past IE, and then headed Mozilla. Who, when fired, started Brave and turned it into a bigger system than FF (including the only relatively new free search engine with its own index), from scratch, in a world already dominated by Chrome, and Safari. I know, I know, Eich donated personal money to some cause that some people on the internet didn'…

> started Brave and turned it into a bigger system than FF

On what metric is Brave bigger than Firefox?

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#275

Post by dahwolf »

I'm surprised people are still reasoning about Mozilla in their former "glory".

Firefox market share has been tanking for 13 years(!) straight. Already 6 years ago the CTO of Mozilla concluded that Chrome had won:

https://andreasgal.com/2017/05/25/chrome-won/

There's nothing Mozilla can do to reverse Firefox's course. It's not an engineering problem, they have no reach to push anything and for ordinary people default-shipped browsers are just fine.

The real question indeed is what Mozilla really is with this reality check in mind. A type of do-good activist organization that does a lot of preaching yet fails to convert this into actual meaning or impact?

All of this made possible by "easy money". They literally do not have to do a damn thing to receive $0.5B from Google. Just keep things as-is.

As they are trying to find alternative income streams, for the first time in their history they're learning what hard money is. Generating $0.5B in the tech market by delivering an actual service/product people will pay you for...is fucking hard.

As such, it's odd that in their borrowed time they continue to give away money or do takeovers of products that do not add revenue. I guess they'll never learn.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#276

Post by wizzwizz4 »

bleep_bloop wrote: post #152
micromacrofoot wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my perspective Mozilla is doing a better job with their browser than Google and Apple are, that's why I use it (despite the market share, I prefer their implementation of most things compared to alternatives). Everything else is gravy. I'm not sure that the money Mozilla spends on other things would be better spent on the browser... would it realistically close any existing gaps between their competition? Arguab…

Depends on what metrics you are using. Compatibility, APIs, Performance, Firefox is objectively worse than Chrome on all aspects. I like Mozilla as a company and I still use Firefox over Chrome knowing that it is objectively a worse browser and experience because I dislike Google and their business practices and i support businesses that I believe in. I am very much against the monopoly Google has over the web space…

Chrome's compatibility is 100%, because it's defined in terms of compatibility with Chrome. (Despite the fact took 21 years before Chromium got a limited subset of MathML, when Firefox had it from Mozilla 1.)

> I am very much against the monopoly Google has over the web space and their positioning to dictate future web standards

Then, to the extent you can, stop using Google-controlled browser engines. Google can only dictate future web "standards" if they're the de-facto standard browser engine… so just refuse to acknowledge them.

If you make websites, use stuff that only works in Firefox (and the indie browsers), like Content MathML, or stick to stuff that works in every browser – and by that, I mean clean, semantic HTML. Force Google to play catch-up for once, or make the whole "catch-up" game irrelevant.

My favourite such feature is alternate stylesheets. Supported by Firefox, and by basically every CSS-supporting indie browser, but by almost none of the Chromiums.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#277

Post by franga2000 »

lucideer wrote: post #271
franga2000 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It sounds like they've set out to play Whac-A-Mole against the all the biggest AI companies in the world. That's exactly what they're doing with the biggest ad trackers and browser vendors. A lot of Mozilla's "side-projects" are stupid and I also agree they should focus more on Firefox, but this one is pretty in line with their general mission of "we'll fight the big guys because, if we don't, nobody else will".

> we'll fight the big guys I'd be more convinced of this if they weren't actively collaborating with the big guys.

"Actively collaborating" meaning doing the bare minimum to keep Google paying while actively fighting the bad things Google does everywhere else?

This is the rich philanthropists debate all over again. Yea, sure, they got rich from participating in the system, but they're using a big chunk of that wealth to fight its consequences. Sure as hell beats the alternative, where the only people willing to fight are the ones without the resources to do it.

I'd honestly rather see Firefox development be funded by selling NFTs and mining crypto, than not funded at all. Volunteer/donation-driven FOSS is great, but it has never been able to compete with for-profit products and it sure as hell couldn't compete with Google here.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#278

Post by ktosobcy »

danielheath wrote: post #269
kelnos wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GeoIP tells you at best what city someone is in, and even then, for smaller towns, will usually report the nearest large city, which could be quite a ways a way. Not to mention it's often even just flat-out wrong. VPNs and other things distort where you are. Sometimes a website might need (or at least think it needs) correct, fine-grained location information. I do suspect that most websites that ask for location inf…

Okay, but I never told Firefox my location, so what’s it doing that geoip can’t?

like Google and apple - they use exact locations of WiFi hotspots most of the time...

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#279

Post by NavinF »

mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #232
lights0123 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BSSIDs of nearby WiFi networks that are compared to lists sent by mobile devices with real GPS

And if I don't even have a wifi card?

Then you represent a trivially small fraction of users. My desktop doesn't have wifi either, but most modern motherboards come with a wifi card built in. Not to mention the majority of visitors to mainstream sites are on mobile and a good chunk of the rest are on a laptop. Also Firefox has 3% market share so we're talking about a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#280

Post by HeckFeck »

Y-bar wrote: post #268
bdcravens wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft needed an OS competitor to have any viable antitrust defense.

... one which they also made a nice little profit of. $150M in the non-voting stock they bought in 1997 turned into $550M in 2003 when they sold most of it.

Ouch. They must've wished that they kept that stock for a few more years.
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